


35 Degrees and Counting

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Davos Won't Watch Big Bang Theory, Discussion of Michelle Duggar's Hair, Huddling For Warmth, I Can't Believe That Wasn't A Tag, If You Type Things In Title Case Enough, M/M, Polar Vortex, TLC Hell, They Start To Look Very Important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two roommates, a polar vortex, a busted furnace, some wine and some bad TV: a recipe for cuddling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	35 Degrees and Counting

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to crossingwinter for the idea!

“ _Polar vortex_ , am I right? It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, or maybe a post-apocalyptic novel.”

“I guess it would really be a  _pre-_ apocalyptic …”

“Nerd.”

That always shut Stannis up, at least for the time it took him to try to think of a witty comeback. By that time, Davos could be well out of it. Stannis sometimes said that Davos was three rooms away before he had even finished his sentence.

“Stealthy bastard,” he complained.

But they weren’t going anywhere now. The two roommates were hunched over the furnace in the basement of their rental house, trying to figure out what had gone wrong to make the heat stop working in Chicago’s coldest winter in memory. The lights were on, the oven lit, but the furnace was shot. 

“It’s dead, Jim,” Davos concluded. He was the handier of the two, but Stannis could sometimes provide a spark of insight when Davos was at a dead end. Not this time.

“Now who’s the nerd?”

Davos ignored this. “We’d better call somebody.”

Forty-five minutes, twelve phone calls and four degrees later, Davos hung up the phone in exasperation for the last time. “Nobody can come before tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “They’re all booked up.”

“Damn. Maybe I can try …” But Stannis looked doubtful. He had connections from his job, but they were more useful if you needed a good tax attorney than a repairman. Davos could see him flipping through his mental Rolodex. Finally, he took out his cell phone and walked into the other room. Davos was half-tempted to follow him just to irritate him because he know Stannis liked privacy when he talked to work people. Before he could decide the best tactic, Stannis was back, looking defeated and bitter in equal measure.

“No joy?”

“The one person I could have asked is out of town. In L.A., where it’s 75 degrees right now.”

“Don’t talk about it,” said Davos. He was starting to feel a little chilly. “Should we go somewhere? I could call Marya, or Sal …”

“No.” Stannis set his jaw. “We can handle our own situation.”

_We?_ Davos wondered what exactly would stop him from going to his ex-wife’s or his friend’s house even if Stannis wanted to stay like the stubborn git that he was. But then he thought of Stannis here alone, in the quickly cooling house, probably staring at his computer all night and not even thinking to drink warm things or wrap up …

“All right. Then we’ll handle it,” and Davos grinned at Stannis, looking for an answering smile. He was unaccountably pleased when he got one. “I’ll make some tea. Or would you rather have wine?”

“Um …”

“I’ll make both,” Davos said. “The living room is the warmest. We’ll just watch some TV until we’re warm enough to go to bed and then it will be tomorrow and one of these useless fuckers will show up, take our money and we’ll be in business.”

Stannis, so capable in some ways and so lost in others, looked downright grateful. Davos wondered if he would know how to mull wine on the stovetop or even how to turn on the burner. He decided he should teach Stannis these things, maybe, as he flicked spices into the saucepan of red wine and held his hands over the warming kettle.

“We could just stay in here, you know,” he said, when he heard Stannis come back into the kitchen. “Leave the oven on and sit in front of it.”

“People have died that way,” Stannis said, and his tone bespoke an ominous finality. “I won’t have it.”

“Okay, no big.” Davos held up his hands in acquiescence. When Stannis had a safety thing on his mind it was best to just keep quiet. He could get awfully fixated. Davos supposed it had to do with his parents’ accident. Of all the quirks a roommate could have, an overactive sense of obedience to the rules was not the worst one, Davos had decided months ago, when they made the first contact on Craigslist after Davos had finally moved out from Marya’s basement.

“No parties after eleven,” Stannis had said then. “Noise complaints. We don’t want the police out.”

Davos had agreed, keeping a neutral expression. What Stannis didn’t know was that his actual worst fear was the cops. Hopefully, he never would have to find that out. Davos kept well to the straight and narrow now. Even the wine was only  _moderately_  spiced, he thought to himself, grimacing. “Did you find a TV show to watch?”

“There’s nothing on,” Stannis said. 

“There’s always  _something_  on.” Davos carried two mugs of steaming wine into the living room and set them down on the table. Stannis was following with the teapot. “It’s just a matter of how much it will rot our brains.” He picked up the remote and flipped channels.

“Infomercial … Weather Channel …  _NYPD Blue_  rerun … I really don’t want to watch that, if you don’t mind …  _Big Bang Theory_ , you’ve got to be kidding. I’m not watching that shit either!  _Hogan’s Heroes_  … Tina Louise on an infomercial for bathtubs for old people. How the mighty have fallen. Were you a Ginger or Mary Ann guy?”

Stannis looked at him blankly.

“You never watched Gilligan’s Island.” 

“No.”

“Here’s  _another_  channel playing the  _Big Bang Theory_? What have they got, a monopoly on network television? It looks like it’s TLC for us, my friend.” Davos took a long swig of spiced wine, feeling it settling pleasantly in his stomach. He curled himself up in a corner of the sofa and breathed in the aromatic steam, and prepared to lose himself in bad, bad television.

_Say Yes to the Dress_  begat  _Hoarders_  begat  _19 Kids and Counting_. Michelle Duggar’s bangs were hairsprayed to the high heavens and Jim Bob’s pleated jeans were pristinely ironed.

“How did he even do it once?” Stannis asked, horrified. 

“He put his penis into—”

“ _That_  is enough,” said Stannis severely. But his voice was a little rougher around the edges than usual, Davos noticed. It must be the wine — or the cold.

“Maybe we better get the blankets from our bedrooms. It’s not getting any warmer.” 

Stannis nodded, and Davos saw a little shiver run through him. “You stay there,” Davos said, taking pity on him. “Drink your tea. I’ll bring your covers too.”

He went into Stannis’ spotless bedroom and had work to untuck the corners of the blankets from the end of the bed. Then into his own room, where he pulled off his comforter and on impulse took some pillows, too. When he came back, Stannis had drained the tea and his cup of wine, so Davos threw him a blanket and a pillow and went to get him more.

_Sister Wives_  begat  _Cake Boss_  begat another episode of  _Say Yes to the Dress,_ except it seemed to be set in the South, judging by the accents. Davos was starting to get sleepy, but he couldn’t go to bed and leave Stannis here, miserable and freezing. He calculated, or tried to: just how much wine had he had, and had Stannis had enough? Davos figured two cups for every stupid reality show, which if he had used two bottles meant Stannis had barely had any. But maybe he had used three bottles. It was an awful lot of wine however you sliced it and he couldn’t really recall. And maybe it had even been three cups per episode. How was he to know? 

The only thing he could really do, since his eyes weren’t going to stay open, was sleep out here on the sofa. Much easier, anyway, than dragging his ass and his blankets all the way back down the hall to his room. Much easier.

“Move over a little,” he said to Stannis. He knew his speech was a bit slurred but couldn’t bother to try to straighten it out. He nudged Stannis with his foot. “Hey.” 

“Are you going to sleep? Why don’t you just go to bed? I thought that’s what you were—”

“I don’t wanna leave you out here,” Davos said sleepily. “But I’m drunk, and I’m tired, and you should move over so I can stretch out a little bit. Plus,” he said, with what he was sure was a stroke of genius, “we’ll stay warmer this way. The uh, shared body heat and all.” That sounded dirtier than he intended. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of Stannis and his body heat and how they could share it — it certainly wasn’t that. He had thought about it plenty of times. More times than he could really remember, actually. All you had to do was look at Stannis to understand it: tall, rangy, handsome when he stopped frowning and actually looked at you straight on. But Davos had kept those thoughts shelved well away. It was only now that they were coming out again, since he had blurted out about shared body heat. Maybe he had better go to bed after all.

“That’s a good point,” Stannis was saying, “it would be more thermally efficient to stay here.” Efficiency!  _Thermal_ efficiency. God bless it. 

“Mm-hm,” Davos said. “’S’true. Thermally.” He nudged Stannis again with his foot. “Move _over_  though.”

“I’m as  _over_  as I can get,” and the usual irritation flashed. Davos headed it off with a shaky grin. “Sorry. I know. Do you need more wine?”  
  
“No. I’m fine. Look, if you turn this way, you will fit on the couch — your feet can go over the edge.”

That would put his head almost  _in_ Stannis’ lap, but at this point, Davos was not going to say a word about it. If this was the closest he might get to “shared body heat,” he wasn’t going to screw it up …

“ … and then I’ll just sit a little back here …” Oh god, he was pressing his body against Davos’, his thigh was against the side of Davos’ neck somehow … “Are you comfortable?”

“Me? Uh … yeah. I’m all good.” Just how good Davos wasn’t going to say, but he could swear his mouth was starting to water with the proximity to Stannis. What in the hell had he put into that wine? Spanish fly? Did expired cloves have an aphrodisiac effect? No, it must just be _Stannis_ , perilously close by and, against all odds, quite warm where they were touching. The television droned on as they settled themselves, and Davos’ blurry arousal was slowly replaced by a drowsy calm …

By and by Stannis laid his hand on Davos’ arm, and Davos almost jumped out of his skin but he made himself be still. Was that on purpose? Was he just getting comfortable or  _what_? But then he felt the hand tighten around his wrist and squeeze, hard. And  _cold._  That would not do — it would not do at all.

“C’mere,” Davos said. If Stannis stood up and left, well, at least Davos would have the entire couch. “You’re still cold.”

“Where?” Stannis’ voice was faint. 

“Come lay down here by me. You’ll get warmer. Thermal efficiency.” 

To his vast surprise, Stannis shrugged the blanket off his lap, and awkwardly slid himself down so he was lying flush against Davos on the narrow couch, his back against Davos’ chest. _This was a bad idea,_ Davos thought, feeling himself start to harden again. But it was also too good an idea to call it off now. Stannis felt so good there, up against him, that Davos couldn’t help but sigh in contentment.

“Still comfortable?” Was Stannis’ voice even more constrained? How was that possible? 

“All good,” Davos half-whispered, right into the skin on the back of Stannis’ neck. He felt Stannis shiver and press himself back against Davos and  _wow,_  that was not expected, and not at all unwelcome.

“We could use a pillow,” Davos heard Stannis say, and he groped for one on the floor. He found one and slid it under both their heads. “Hm,” Stannis said. “It smells good.”

“Oh  _really,_ ” and Davos wrapped an arm around Stannis, throwing caution to the wind, bringing the warmth of their bodies right together, fitting them in place. Stannis curled into his arm and Davos couldn’t quite believe it.

“It smells like you,” Stannis murmured. Davos would have pursued this line of questioning further but he heard Stannis’ even breathing and knew he was asleep, with his face half buried in Davos’ pillow. They could talk about it in the morning — or not, maybe. Maybe there wouldn’t be any talking. Maybe they wouldn’t answer the door when the furnace guy showed up. Maybe they could just stay here like this until the polar vortex-deep freeze-snowpocalypse let up. It was supposed to end in a few days, but Davos hoped it would last until sometime in July.


End file.
